Here we are, for the sixth time this year, figuring out how many packs you need to open in order to get the exact card you want.
Lucky for you, I happen to have that information, no matter the card. Want a nonfoil Sculptor’s Stronghold rare? Done. Interested in Fracture Foils? Gotcha covered.
Even, dare I admit it, the highly-desired Facet Foils and the Headliner.
So let’s go on a journey to the center of the math, and get to the best stuff!
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Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
We’re about done with Reality Fracture previews, and now we’re also getting the full decklists for the single deck from this set, plus the five Foundations-themed single-color decks.
I first talked about these decks in May, when the covers were previewed, and in some cases they listened to me! In others, they didn’t want to listen at all.
So let’s go over what I mentioned four months ago, and two more potential specs if you’re upgrading the decks.
For each of the decks, I’m mentioning a card. Feel free to go for the cheapest nonfoil, or sweet promo foils. The world is your oyster.
First of all, there’s a glaring oversight in these decks: not a medallion to be seen! One of the true joys of a mono-color deck is running broken stuff like this, and Medallions enable double-spell turns like little else. Whatever color you are, go get one.
Calling All Angels:
Things I mentioned:
Battle Angels of Tyr – If you’ve never put this into play turn three off of a turn-two Giada, then you haven’t lived. As long as one of your opps has more cards than the others, more lands, or more life, you get bonuses. If two of your opponents are tied, no benefit, but that’s okay, you’re bashing faces in.
Radiant, Archangel – Being on the Reserved List, this card bounces up and down as Angels come and go. This should be one of the ups, so get in cheap.
Should get:
Emeria, the Sky Ruin – In the modern age, there’s a lot of dual-color lands with Plains as a type, but the easiest way is lots of basics. This was just in the SOS Commander decks, so cheap copies are out there.
Starheim Unleashed – Even the borderless foil is under $5, and when a white deck does Foretell, people know it’s coming even though it’s facedown. Ridiculous card for what it does.
Keen Engineering:
Things I mentioned:
Arcum Dagsson – One of the most unfair things you can untap with, and you get to tutor from your deck. Go get yourself a Portal to Phyrexia or Akroma’s Memorial at instant speed, for the low cost of a Thopter.
Leonardo da Vinci – The card is cheap enough that it could have been included, but the IP is a greater issue. There’s not a lot of Thopter synergies this strong.
Should get:
Uthros, Titanic Godcore – Tolarian Academy will forever be banned in Commander. Uthros is worth the effort of putting 12 power into, believe me.
Repurposing Bay – There are a lot of great chains you can build into a Commander deck. Personal favorite: Solemn Simulacrum into Ugin’s Nexus then Spine of Ish Sah. Start the chain with Simulacrum Synthesizer in play for real laughs.
Wretched Ranks
Things I mentioned:
Crypt Ghast – It’s not a Zombie, so it loses points, but this is one of the best things to be doing in a mono-black deck. Nirkana Revenant is a maybe, but it’s six mana.
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed – A Zombie who makes your other Zombies rise from the dead? Heck yes. Not crazy expensive either.
Should get:
Grave Pact – You’re sacrificing for value, why not pass it around? We’ve even got an incredible version that’s hitting Dump Week, with Thanos and Death. Scoop it all up!
Zombie Apocalypse – Zombies have a lot of unfair cards for their creature type, and this is one of the top ones. There’s tons of Humans that need destroying, and you get your whole team back. I’m partial to the Dark Ascension promo, but the Evil Dead version is very reasonably priced.
Reign of Dragons
Things I mentioned:
Terror of the Peaks – They put this in a Secret Lair and the card bottomed out at $20. I knew it wouldn’t be in, but every Dragon deck needs one.
Zirilan of the Claw – Just like Radiant, Archangel, this is a Reserved List card that goes up and down over time. We’re around $10 right now, so it’ll bump up some before starting to trickle downwards again.
Should get:
Sarkhan’s Unsealing – This is a criminally underplayed card. Warstorm Surge is two more mana and works on everything, yes, but Unsealing can wipe out hordes if you play huge-power creatures. Dragons sure do fit the bill!
Desolation of Smaug – I’ve been pleased with this so far in my Ur-Dragon deck, where it’s able to cast a five-drop Dragon, but it should be good in any Dragon-themed deck.
Tramplesaurus Rex
Things I mentioned:
Vaultborn Tyrant – If you’re looking for big green value, Vaultborn is pretty high up there, giving you redundancy and life as well as cards. Overdue for a special printing, honestly.
Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant – With the amount of acceleration in the deck, this is one of the prime targets to be your first beast on the board, mainly because he comes with the rest of the team right behind him.
Should get:
Radaghast of Rhosgobel – Radaghast is the #6 commander from The Hobbit on EDHREC, because he’s a single-color, powered-down version of one of the most broken Commander cards ever, Prophet of Kruphix. Even the fixed versions of busted cards are amazing, and Radaghast is indeed amazing.
Castle Garenbrig – If you’re in a big-green, heavy-creatures deck, why not add free mana acceleration? Note that you can use any sort of mana to jump to six, so if you start with two mana dorks, play this turn three, boom, giant beastie in play. You’re welcome.
Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
Here we go with another superdrop, just two weeks after the last. I want to remind everyone that if you miss a drop, you shouldn’t panic, there’s going to be another one along very soon. Spend to the level you have, and don’t feel obligated to join a queue 30 times for every drop.
This drop is all about that 80’s icon, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The Netflix She-Ra is ignored, as is the movie, but there’s only one card with a shot directly from the cartoon, and we’ll get to that.
For each drop, I’m listing the EDHREC number and the other special printings of the card. Since we’ve got a Command Tower and a Sol Ring, just know there’s way too many to list. Also remember that EDHREC isn’t perfect, most people don’t upload a deck and there’s a skew towards cards that were in preconstructed Commander decks. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it is a limitation.
I’m going to go through each Lair, and talk about just the cards, then we’ll get to the bonuses and the circumstances.
Winota, Joiner of Forces
18.2k
FCA Borderless $2 FCA Borderless Foil $14 IKO Extended Art $14 IKO Extended Art Foil $44
Crackle with Power
129k
STX Extended Art $17 STX Extended Art Foil $34 SOA Showcase $8 SOA Showcase Foil $10 SOA Japanese Showcase $8 SOA Silver Scroll Foil $56 OTP Showcase $7 OTP Showcase Foil $10 OTP Borderless Textured Foil $64
Delina, Wild Mage
89.7k
AFR Showcase $4 AFR Showcase Foil $6
Bruenor Battlehammer
63.1k
AFR Showcase $1 AFR Showcase Foil $9
Konda’s Banner
10.1k
Pack Foil $54
There’s a lot that is appealing in this drop, but also some caveats. Winota’s special copy with awesome Amano work isn’t even half of what the original FEA price is, so I have a hard time seeing this version as $20+. This is a cool Crackle, but there’s already several to choose from. Bruenor has gone up with all the Dwarf and Equip strategies lately, and Man-At-Arms doesn’t look like a dwarf. I don’t think this will beat the $9 showcase. Konda’s Banner hasn’t had a printing since original Champions of Kamigawa, so we’re mining reprint equity here.
Overall, this looks like a drop that would linger, since it’s not stunning and it’s not filled with must-haves.
Tinybones, the Pickpocket
60.9k
OTJ Showcase $11
Tasha’s Hideous Laughter
54.4k
AFR Extended Art $4 AFR Extended Art Foil $4 SLD Borderless $12 SLD Borderless Rainbow Foil $11
Bottomless Pit
28.2k
SLD Borderless $17 SLD Borderless Foil $20
Necrogen Mists
23.8k
SLD Borderless $15 SLD Borderless Foil $15
Breach the Multiverse
166k
MOM Extended Art $12 MOM Extended Art Foil $13
Pit and Mists were both in a 2023 lair, Bad to the Bones, that was mostly focused on Tinybones, Trinket Thief. No reprints for either since then, so don’t read too deeply into those prices. I do like the Tasha’s and the Breach here, they should solidly be $10, maybe $15 as well. This is another solid, if unexciting, set of cards.
They memed us on the Swan Song (more on that in a moment), so take your pick about which card goes with “Until We Meet Again!”
My personal conjecture: Terror. Just an image of Skeletor running away, meme accomplished.
Card Name
EDHREC Count
Special Printings
Sisay, Weatherlight Captain
18.8k
MH1 Timeshifts Alt Art Etched $4 MH1 Timeshifts Alt Art Etched Foil $7 SLD Borderless $67 SLD Borderless Foil $87
This is the Lair I’m most excited about buying. Kutzil is in a ton of decks as a good uncommon, and Sisay, Emiel, and Silence are all good-to-great value. That would be fine, but you’re adding in a Sol Ring that’s likely $15-$20 in with that and now we’re off to the races. Again, be cautious about the Sisay prices–this is Buttercup from the Princess Bride drop and it’s easy to lose focus. The other SL version is the left-handed one, a fun meme of a drop.
Disclaimer: Samut’s SLD printing is Inigo Montoya from the Princess Bride drop, and Sakashima’s price is from being in the City Styles 1 drop. When you discount those two numbers, the drop looks much more mediocre and much less exciting. I don’t think this is a bad drop, but I’m definitely not buying it and I think it will languish with low prices.
This drop is all about the Sword. War and Peace has a pretty low inclusion rate as Swords go, and the other SLD version is Cap’s shield from his drop in Spring of 2025. The other cards in this drop are unlikely to hold a high price, but the Tower might surprise us. One side is Castle Greyskull, the other Snake Mountain, so you get to declare your allegiance. When there’s only one card of value, I tend to pass and go after the card in Dump Week.
We have three bundles! The all-foil saves you zero dollars, the all-nonfoil saves you zero dollars, but the everything bundle saves you $15. That’s pretty disappointing, and doesn’t give a strong reason for buying a bundle.
The Swan Song references an early Internet meme. Enjoy the link from 15 years ago with 232 million views and AIM sound effects. Cheapest Swan Song is $10, Miku is in the $55 range for ENG foils. I’d rather go for Dump Week on these and not worry about trying to get copies of this card for the $149 spend. You’ll have your chance at sub-$10.
The biggest unknown for this Lair is the print run. Ghostbusters was not very popular, and lingered a long while. Second Breakfast sold out immediately, and the rest of the Hobbit drops took a day or more to sell out.
The one that should sell out first is She-Ra. That’s a top-notch collection, and has all the things you’d want from a Lair. UB printings sometime seem overdone, so it’s possible there’s a lot more of this one and the Winota He-Man. I can’t predict print run, but this lair is the safest bet to go up, from a financial viewpoint.
If they printed half as many of Allies and Enemies, then that will go first and start setting a very different market. Regrettably, we don’t know the relative runs for each Lair, so I am confident in which one should do well. I know that’s not always related to the print run, and so all we can do is make our best guess and be as ready as we can be.
Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
Magic’s going through an expansion period, and the dovetailing of multiple factors all at once has led to a development that is exemplified by Collector Boosters: Magic has become both relatively cheap to play AND has never had more expensive cards.
I want to take a look at where prices are in general, where they could go, and what that means for how we get cards: Play Boosters, Collector Boosters, and Secret Lairs.
There’s a theme for recent decks (last couple of years) where most of a deck is pretty cheap, and then you’ll have 1-3 cards which are redonk powerhouses and you need four of these.
Examples from recent history include:
Badgermole Cub
Bristly Bill
Vivi Orniter
Agatha’s Soul Cauldron
Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
Atraxa, Grand Unifier
Cavern of Souls
More words, all mythics, several banned. Sheoldred and Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy were $100 cards in their Standard. The common point here is that if you look at Standard, it’s pretty cheap to build a deck until you get to the key/important/overpowered mythics, and that’s what gooses the prices up.
Modern and Legacy are pretty warped, and I’m leaving those out. (Modern is dominated by the Modern Horizons cards anyway). But Magic’s most popular format is Commander, and that is also getting cheaper…depending on what you’re playing.
If you have to maximize your Commander deck for peak efficiency, then yes, Commander is pretty pricey. You’ll need shocklands and fetches and duals, because you need everything untapped.
But if you’re willing to accept a turn slower, or even the chance of a turn slower, you can run cards like Canopy Vista, Deathcap Glade, or Sea of Clouds. The Triomes haven’t been reprinted, but there’s an ocean of cards for helping you with a three-to-five color manabase, if you’re willing to give up one mana (Cascading Cataracts) or entering tapped (Path of Ancestry).
There are absolutely some super-expensive cards that people build around and Wizards reprints at a glacial pace. And if you don’t want to pay for a Rhystic Study, then downgrade a little and play Mystic Remora, Insight, Insight Engine, Ghostly Pilferer, etc.
Commander is a game that doesn’t ask you to optimize, and has a whole level structure for the spectrum from ‘100 random cards’ to ‘100 shark teeth pointed at your groin’ so you can tell people what you’re doing at the beginning, when you first sit down to play.
On the opposite end, if you want to get fancy and be a total Smaug, hoarding the best of everything, then Commander is exactly your jam. I have a Dragon deck stacked with the best and shiniest that I can do, though I’ve had to make accommodations. I don’t want to pay for OG foil Onslaught fetches, so I got the ten fetches from ZNR in foil. Guru basics would be pretty radical, but for the memes I’ve got full-text lands.
Go for artist proofs, or textless foil Gaea’s Cradle, or Alpha Timetwister. Get as fancy as you want. Magic is one of the last bastions of playability over collectability, but you can be sure that there are top-level Commander decks and Cubes out there that are not skimping on anything to be both collectible and powerful.
The point here is that aside from certain staples, no one has to spend a ton on a deck. The cards that get pricey are the ones that make a splash immediately and combo off or represent an incredible boost in a deck’s power. Standard doesn’t need a set of fetches, and even if they reprinted them into Standard, there’s enough on the market that the price is still reasonable.
Shocklands are another great example of Wizards’ dedication to making staples cheap and at the same time, represents the excess someone can go to. Steam Vents, traditionally the most in-demand of the shocks, can be had for just over $10 per copy or $2700 for the cheapest serialized copy on TCGPlayer.
This gap in value, without sacrificing anything but being shiny and serialized, is completely due to Wizards making good cards in Play Boosters and then putting rare/pretty versions into Collector Boosters. No longer are players forced to go lurking through eBay for foreign foils, now we’re given a selection of treatments and Secret Lairs for our magpie selves.
And this is also why most Collector Booster boxes are rising in price: we’re attracting collectors from all over, a trend that started in Final Fantasy. We’re about to get all the Star Trek collectors with signature-playable chase versions of cards, which should make for another Universes Beyond set that brings in a lot of new interest and lots of liquid cash.
Play Boosters haven’t moved much in price, but Collector Boosters have all risen across the board. There’s even sales of the empty CB boxes, a thing I could not have fathomed but I imagine people are decorating with them or using them as backdrop for streaming. Something purely decorative and pretty.
We’re all chasing how Lord of the Rings’ Special Edition went to ridiculous heights, hitting $12,000 sales on TCGPlayer before coming back down to the current valuation of $6,000. Collector Booster boxes for Final Fantasy were under a grand at the start of the year and have climbed to $1,700 with clear eyes on passing two grand.
We haven’t seen that huge growth in other UB sets, but Hobbit is trying real hard, bobbing up to $900 and currently trending down to under $800, but with its cousin being the flagbearer there’s a lot of predictions about where it’ll end up.
I talked about this with James on MTG Fast Finance recently, and I fully believe that opening packs has never been more of a gamble. Every set, I break down the odds of opening every type of card you could want, and even the ‘good’ odds are more than 100 packs to open. Gleaming Splendor, one of the hottest cards from the set, is 90 Collector Booster packs to get a nonfoil book cover, 166 packs to open as a book cover foil, and 333 packs as a surge foil book cover. Just buy the singles you want! Opening packs is a losing proposition, even though it feels so so good.
Know what else feels good? Buying CBs for a good price, then waiting a year and selling them at amazing prices. Keep aware of the trends and stay strong.
Finally, I want to talk a little about Secret Lairs, Wizards’ golden goose. Every Secret Lair drop is ridiculously profitable for Wizards, even things like the Zeta drop which went badly. They have to pay for the art, and a little bit of graphic design, and then the print costs. That’s it, and that’s sold directly to us for $30/$40 or more. Margins through the roof, profit like never before, and now they are doing the hybrid of limited printing and print to demand by offering to let us buy it now and pay for it to arrive in a year.
That method has worked on the Miku decks, which are under $300, compared to the nearly $500 that Goblinstorm immediately got to. I maintain that the Zeta cards are ugly and should end up as the cheapest version of their cards, but the packs selling out in something like 45 minutes of available time means the reselling is fierce and profitable. If I’d known the print run was that small, I would have ignored the appearance and gone for all I could get.
We’re not going to see a decrease in Secret Lair printings. Ignore the ones you want to ignore, focus on value, but the FOMO on the sold-out offerings will power prices to the $100 range immediately. Print run is the big unknown, and will continue to be.
CBs and Secret Lairs are the main products we can make money on by being thoughtful, so stay tuned here and to the podcast for the best insights.
Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
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